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Ong's Hat

kamalktk

kamalktk

Antediluvian
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
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A pamphlet from the 1980's makes claims that have people showing up on some guy's doorstep decades later.

https://gizmodo.com/ongs-hat-the-early-internet-conspiracy-game-that-got-t-1832229488

"According to a pamphlet that began popping up in late ‘80s—“Ong’s Hat: Gateway to the Dimensions, a Full-Color Brochure for the Institute of Chaos Studies and Moorish Science Ashram”—Ong’s Hat was once home to secret experiments led by the Dobbs Twins, a pair of Princeton scientists who’d been forced to build a secret lab out in the Pine Barrens after their work in “Chaos Studies” got them booted from the academy. Nearby, a mystic scholar and carpet salesman named Wali Fard had established the ragtag Moorish Science Ashram, and over time the scientists and spiritual seekers met and began to merge their pursuits, blending meditation, physics, alchemy, and metaphysical disciplines like remote viewing in never-before-seen ways. "
 
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I recall a popular book of the time (early 90's?) on Chaos Theory (which I bought and planned to read but now clearly won't) - so I still don't understand the link between chaos and fractals. I never heard of Ong's Hat at the time - perhaps it was a much more American thing? The secret Lab i presume is the wooden hut (in the photo's) - which looks better suited to bird watching than being clever.
 
That was interesting. Thanks, kamalktk for posting that. I'd run across references to Ong's Hat in my travels on the kookier side of the interwebz, but never knew much about it. I think I first encountered it in connection to the Montauk silliness, and figured it was just another load of hooey. Looks like that assessment wasn't far off.

It's really interesting how the "zine scene" influenced the early web experience in so many ways. Zines were a very ephemeral phenomenon, and if they had not come along when they did, I think they'd never have happened. Somewhere I have a copy of a self-published booklet, a stapled mass of photocopied pages by an obviously eccentric but occasionally brilliant young man. It's a collection of observations scribbled on notepad pages, badly copied photos, magazine articles and suchlike. Found it in a laundromat near a college campus (of course) and saw a few other copies here and there. The fellow either spent considerable money at Kinko's or had access to someone's copier, probably while they weren't looking. Anyway, it's my one artifact from that moment in time. By the time I learned about Zines, it was in the Whole Earth Catalog or somewhere like that, so the fun was over by then.
 
I also recall the Ong's Hat tale in connection to Montauk, time travel/dimensional travel, and mental/drug trips , and Joseph Metheny.
Been so long ago that's about all I can remember.
 
kamalktk said:
... Ong’s Hat was once home to secret experiments led by the Dobbs Twins, a pair of Princeton scientists who’d been forced to build a secret lab out in the Pine Barrens after their work in “Chaos Studies” got them booted from the academy. ...
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Consider this passage:

... After the Crash, a number of destitute Moors and synpathizers began turning up at the Ashram seeking refuge. Among them were two young chaos scientists recently fired from Princeton (on a charge of "seditious nonsense"), a brother and sister, Frank and Althea Dobbs. The Dobbs twins spent their early childhood on a UFO-cult commune in rural Texas, founded by their father, a retired insurance salesman who was murdered by rogue disciples during a revival in California. ...
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SOURCE: https://jacobsm.com/deoxy/deoxy.org/inc2.htm

Dobbs? Father = 'retired insurance salesman who was murdered by rogue disciples during a revival in California'? UFO cult in Texas?

Do these alleged tidbits not remind anyone of something - something that suggests this is another fanzine-era surrealistic legend akin to that of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs himself?

And by the way ... The most specific description of the Dobbs twins' Princeton experience I've found so far describes them as having submitted a joint PhD thesis that was rejected. If this is 'true' (see above), they weren't renegade 'scientists', but rather failed doctoral students.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Do these alleged tidbits not remind anyone of something - something that suggests this is another fanzine-era surrealistic legend akin to that of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs himself?
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The link in my post itself says the whole thing was a send up that people started taking seriously even though the originator said is a send up.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The most specific description of the Dobbs twins' Princeton experience I've found so far describes them as having submitted a joint PhD thesis that was rejected. If this is 'true' (see above), they weren't renegade 'scientists', but rather failed doctoral students.
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This is somewhat tangential, but would Princeton - or, indeed, any other institution - accept one thesis between two candidates, twins or not?
 
The Gizmodo article makes it sound like pretty much everyone "got" the joke until it was marketed to the hard core conspiracy nuts. That's not really surprising, though the "marketers" seemed to get a lot more than they bargained for. Yep, a lot of them people are crazy. Who knew? That would be about the time I became aware of the story. I think I first encountered it when someone was using it in an attempt to prop up--er 'scuse me, corroborate-- some flapdoodle about Montauk. I never did see anything more about it that looked any more genuine. There were endless stories floating around back then. The silly old "Branton" crap still had currency, for example.

That was a surprisingly good piece for Gizmodo. I haven't looked at that site in a long time though. Perhaps they have grown up.
 
There's some speculation that the Ong's Hat crew were connected to the John Titor internet hoax, though seems not to be proven.
 
Krepostnoi said:
This is somewhat tangential, but would Princeton - or, indeed, any other institution - accept one thesis between two candidates, twins or not?
Click to expand...

I thought I'd replied to this query when it was first posted ... Sorry - I must have gotten diverted and failed to finally post it.

Yes - there is such a thing. I've read of this being possible under certain rare conditions - typically when the doctoral candidates are jointly involved in a large project affording results substantial enough to warrant awarding two doctorates.

For example ... This webpage describes MIT's policies regarding joint theses:

https://oge.mit.edu/gpp/degrees/thesis/joint-theses/

(NOTE: This webpage explicitly cites only Master's theses, but this same policy page is referenced from the doctoral thesis overview page as well.)

When doing my own doctoral literature research I requested and received a joint thesis co-authored by two doctoral candidates. I don't recall any details about it beyond the fact it turned out to be irrelevant to my subject matter, and I sent it back to the library. Most all the mentions I ever heard of joint doctoral theses were while I was in Sweden, and my recollection of the one specimen I saw was that it was from one of the Nordic countries, if not Sweden itself.
 
lordmongrove said:
A proto-internet conspiracy hoax

https://gizmodo.com/ongs-hat-the-ea...2BDeSydOYY9ULzBx1wu679N8cmGMEkcOAR_vgGRTBJRYs
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Good link.....and I recall reading many of those stories and related names back in the day on various boards and places on the early net.
A 'hoax' that became real to some who wanted it to be real.
From the article:
"For better or worse, the trail to Ong’s Hat was always supposed to be, as Matheny put it, a “liminal place,” where someone with a foot on solid ground could suspend disbelief and entertain strange possibilities. The power of the Ong’s Hat saga, said Metcalfe, came from the fact that the story’s real parts were just as strange or even weirder than the fictional elements. "
 
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